Prelude for War

1

Simon kept on walking. How he managed it was one of those unsung victories of mind over matter; but he kept on. His steps remained outwardly unchanged, and to all ordinary appearances he was still only one of the undistinguished members of the crowd who scurried to and fro like well-trained movie extras providing background atmosphere for the picture of any busy terminus. None of them knew how easy it would have been for him to turn and run like a hunted fox.

But that would have singled him out at once. His only hope was to retain the anonymity which had so far given him divine protection. Quietly, evenly, without a trace of excitement, the Saint walked on, turning in a gradual curve that took him imperceptibly further away from the watching detective and finally reversed his direction entirely without ever including an abrupt movement that would have caught anyone's eye. Icy needles danced over his skin, but he completed the manoeuvre without a tremor. He knew that the detective had seen him and was looking at him; as he headed back towards the nearest exit, he could feel the man's eyes boring into the back of his neck…

God who in His infinite wisdom has ordained that all respectable English citizens shall go for their holidays to the same places at the same time chose that moment to let a fresh horde of tourists loose in the station. Hot, sun blistered, multitudinous, clutching their bags and parcels and souvenirs and progeny, they swarmed around the Saint and swallowed him up. Simon had never been glad of such inundations before, but he was so grateful for that one that he could have embraced each individual member of the motley mob. He let himself be carried along by the spate of humanity, and it held him in its midst and swept him through the exit he had been making for, and the rearguard jammed in the doors behind him with a hearty unanimity that could scarcely have impeded pursuit more effectively if it had been organized.

Simon did not wait to see what happened. Perhaps the detective who had seen him was still not certain of his identification; perhaps he had at last made up his mind and was even then trying to struggle through the crowd; but in either event the Saint had no desire to linger. As soon as he was outside he set off at the speed of a racing walker, and felt as if he only began to breathe again when he had crossed Eastbourne Terrace with no sounds of a hue and cry behind him.

His taxi driver was still optimistically waiting, and he opened the nearest door as he saw the Saint approach.

Simon smiled and shook his head.

"Sorry," he said, "but I just came to tell you you needn't wait any more."

"Orl right, guv'nor."

The driver looked dejected.

Simon tucked a ten-shilling note into the front of his coat.

"On your way. And have a drink with me when they open."

"That I will, guv'nor," said the man less glumly. "And I 'opes I see you again."

The Saint stood on hot bricks until the cab turned the next corner and passed out of sight.

Then he got into the driving seat of the Daimler.

It was his own car, anyway, although the taxi driver might not have appreciated that. And by the grace of good angels it was a car that he had always used for various nefarious purposes, and therefore it had been registered in a number of different names but never in his own. It was one car whose number plates the mobile police would not be watching for. Perhaps more cogently than any of those things, it was the only car at his immediate disposal. It was not what he would have chosen for what he had to do, but he could not choose.

Lady Valerie had left the keys in the switch and the engine was nicely warm. The Saint was away in four seconds after his taxi disappeared.

And on a trip like he had to make every second was vital. And he had to waste precious scores of them, feeling his way westwards out of London by devious and unfrequented back streets. The same dogged efficiency that had covered the railway stations was sure to have stationed watchers on the main traffic arteries leading out of London, but the labyrinthine ways of London and its suburbs are so many that it would have been impossible to cover every outlet. And Simon Templar had an encyclopedic memory for maps that would have staggered a professional cartographer. It was a gift that he had developed and disciplined for years against just such contingencies as this. He drove through back streets and suburban avenues and afterwards through country lanes, and did not join a main road until he came into Bracknell.

Then he gave the Daimler its head to the last mile an hour that could be squeezed out of it.

He drove with one eye on the road and the other switching between the speedometer and the dashboard clock. To race an express train in the Hirondel was nothing, but to attempt it in that sedate and dowager-worthy limousine was something else. Mathematically it came out to be simply and flatly impossible. But Anford was a one-horse village on an antiquated single-track branch line over which trains shuttled back and forth with no great respect for timetables and never at even official intervals of less than an hour. The odds were all against Lady Valerie catching an immediate connection; and that uncertain margin of delay at Marlborough was all that the Saint could hope to race against.

A few days ago he had taken the Hirondel from Anford to London in an hour and twenty-five minutes. Risking his neck at least once in every two miles, he stopped the Daimler at Anford Station in three minutes under two hours.

He jumped out and went in.

It took him a little while to find a timetable. Eventually he located one, pasted to a board on the wall and smudged and roughened with the trails of many grubby fingers that had painstakingly traced routes across its closely printed acreage before him. With difficulty he analyzed the eye-aching maze of figures with which railway companies strive so nobly to preserve the secret of their schedules. The train which Lady Valerie had caught should have reached Marlborough thirty-five minutes ago; and there was a connection to Anford listed for three minutes later.

Simon searched the deserted premises and presently found the stationmaster weeding his garden.

"When does the next train from Marlborough get in?" he asked.

"The nex' train, sur? Urse been in already."

"What's that?"

The stationmaster pounced on a weed.

"I said, urse been in already."

"I mean the train that left Marlborough at four o'clock."

"Urse been in."

"But it couldn't!" protested the Saint. "It's never done that trip in forty minutes in its life!"

The stationmaster bristled.

"Well, urse done it today," he stated with justifiable pride.

"What time did it get in?"

"I dunno."

"But surely—"

"No, I dunno. It was five minutes ago be the clock, but the clock ain't been keepin' sich good time since we took the bird's nest outen ur."

"Thank you," said the Saint shakily.

"You're welcome, sur," said the stationmaster graciously, and resumed his weeding.

The Saint ploughed back through the station on what seemed to be lengthening into an endless pilgrimage. In the station yard he found a new arrival, in the shape of an automobile of venerable aspect against which leaned a no less venerable man in a peaked cap with a clay pipe stuck through the fringe of a moustache that almost hid his chin. Simon went up to him and seized him joyfully.

"Did you just pick up a young lady here — a dark pretty girl in a light-blue suit?"

The man cupped a hand to one ear.

"Pardon?"

Simon repeated his question.

The driver sucked his pipe, producing a liquid whistling noise.

"Old lady goin' on fifty, would that be?"

"I said a young lady — about twenty-five."

"I 'ad a young lady larst week—"

"No, today."

"No, Thursday."

"Today."

The man shook his head.

"No, I ain't seen 'er. Where does she live?"

"I want to know where she went to," bawled the Saint. "She got here on the last train. She may have taken a cab, or somebody may have met her. Did you see her?"

"No, I didn't see 'er. Mebbe Charlie seed 'er."

"Who's Charlie?"

"Yus."

'Who's Charlie?"

"There ain't no need to shout at me," said the driver resentfully. "I can 'ear perfickly well. Charlie 'as the other taxi around 'ere. This 'll be 'im comin' along now."

A noise like a threshing machine had arisen in the distance. It grew louder. With a clatter like a dozen milk cans being shaken together in an iron box another venerable automobile rolled into the yard, came to a halt with a final explosion like a pistol shot and stood there with its nose steaming.

"Oi," said the Saint's informant. "Charlie."

A very long man peeled himself out of the second cab and came over. He had two large front teeth like a rabbit, and one of his eyes stared at the bridge of his nose.

"Gennelman tryin' to find a lady," explained the man with the clay pipe.

"A dark pretty girl, about twenty-five, in a light-blue suit," Simon repeated.

"Hgh," said the long man. "I haw her."

"You saw her?"

"Hgh. Hungh hook her hu Hanghuh."

"You took her to Anford?" said the Saint, straining for the interpretation.

"Hgh."

"Where did you go?"

"Hanghuh."

"I mean, what part of Anford?"

"Hh Hohungh Hleeh."

"I'm sorry," said the Saint, with desperate courtesy. "I didn't quite catch—"

"Hh Hohungh Hleeh.".

"I beg your pardon?"

"Hh Hohungh Hleeh."

"Oh yes. You mean—"

"Hh Hohungh Hleeh," said the long man, with some asperity.

Simon felt the sweat coming out on the palms of his hands.

"Can you tell me where that is?"

"Hingh Hanghuh."

Simon looked imploringly at his first friend.

"You carn't miss it," said the man through his curtain of white whisker. "Straight through the market place, an' it's on yer left."

Simon clapped a hand to his head.

"Good God," he said. "You mean the Golden Fleece?"

"Haingh hagh hogh I heengh hehhigh hu?" demanded the long man scornfully.

The Saint smote them both on the back together.

"You two beauties," he said rapturously. "Why did the goblins ever let you go?"

He picked up the nearest hand, slapped money into it and started back for the Daimler at a run. For the first time since the beginning of that long feverish ordeal he felt that there was music in his soul again. Even the Daimler seemed to throw off its sedateness and fly like a bird over the short winding road that led from Anford Station into the town.

In its way, the Golden Fleece was such an obvious destination that he had not even considered it. And now again he wondered what was in Lady Valerie's mind.

But wondering was only a pastime when he was within reach of knowledge. He parked the Daimler around the next turning beyond the hotel, where it would not be too obviously in view, and walked back. At that lifeless hour before the English inn is permitted by law to recommence its function for the evening, the lobby and lounge of the hotel were empty. There was not even any sign of tenancy at the office. He moved quietly over to the desk and looked at the register. The last signature on the page said "Valerie Woodchester" in a big round scrawl. In the column beside it had been entered a room number: 6.

Simon flitted up the stairs. There was no one to question him. He moved along the upper corridor in effortless silence until he came to a door on which was painted the figure 6. When he saw it it was like Parsifal coming to the end of his journey. He stood for several seconds outside, not moving, not even breathing, simply listening with ears keyed to hypernormal receptiveness. The only sounds they could catch were occasional almost inaudible rustlings beyond the door. He took a quick catlike step forward, grasped the handle and turned it smoothly, and went into the room.

Lady Valerie looked up at him from a couch on the far side of the room with her face blurring into a blank oval of dumbfounded amazement.

Simon locked the door and stood with his back to it.

"Darling," he said reproachfully, but with the lilt of rapture still playing havoc with the evenness of his voice, "what was the matter with our hospitality?"

2

The room was one of those quaint dormitoryes which have always made the English country hotel so attractive to discriminating travellers. It was principally furnished with a gigantic imitation-oak wardrobe; an imitation mahogany dressing table with a tilting mirror; a black-enamelled iron bedstead with brass knobs on it; and a marble-topped washstand bearing a china basin with a china jug standing in it, a soap dish with no soap and a vase for toothbrushes. Under the marble slab were cupboard doors concealing unmentionable utensils, and under them stood a large china slop pail. The pattern on the wallpaper had apparently been designed to depict one of the wilder horticultural experiments of Mr Luther Burbank, in which purple tulips grew on the central stems of bright green cabbages, the whole crop being tied together with trailing coils and bows of pink and blue ribbon. The dimensions of the room were so cunningly contrived that a slender person of normal agility could, with the exercise of reasonable care, just manage to find a path between them without having to bark his shins or stub his toes on any particular piece of furniture. Even so, there was no more than barely sufficient room to contain the chintz-covered armchair in which Lady Valerie was sitting and behind which she had unsuccessfully tried to stuff away the sheaf of papers that she had been perusing when the Saint came in.

Simon's satiric eye rested on the ends of documents that still protruded.

"If you'd told us you wanted something to read," he said, "we could have lent you some good books."

He leaned against the door, clothed in magnificent assurance, as if he had been conversationally breaking the ice with an old friend from whom he was sure to receive a cordial welcome.

He got it. The stunned astonishment dissolved out of her face and a broad schoolgirlish grin spread over her mouth.

"Well, I'm damned!" she said. "Aren't you marvellous? How on earth did you know I was here?"

He grinned in return. After all that he had been through to find her he couldn't help it.

"Haven't you heard about me?" he said. "I do these tricks for my living."

"Of course," she said. "I always knew you were supposed to be frightfully clever, but I didn't really believe you were as clever as all that… Oh well, we live and learn, and anyhow you haven't got it all your own way. I think I was pretty clever myself, the way I got away from your house. I worked it all out before I went to bed last night. Don't you think it was clever of me?"

"Very clever," he agreed. "But you see it was just the way I expected you to be clever."

She stared at him.

"The way you…"

"Yes."

"But you don't mean you—"

"Naturally," he lied calmly. "I knew that if you got away, the first thing you'd do would be to get hold of those papers, wherever you'd left them. I wanted to know where they were, and I didn't want to have to beat it out of you. So I just let you get away and fetch them for me."

"I don't believe you!"

"Would you like me to tell you all about it? I was behind you all the time. You picked up the ticket at the South Kensington post office, and then you went on and collected the package from the checkroom at Paddington. You took the first train down here, and you were driven up from the station by a bloke with no roof to his mouth and one of the oldest taxis on the road. Does that help?"

She looked as crestfallen as a child that has had a succulent lollipop snatched out of its mouth.

"I think you're beastly," she said.

"I know. Pigs move pointedly over to the other end of the sty when I come in. And now suppose you tell me what those papers were doing at Paddington."

"That's easy. You see I had them with me when I was coming down here for last week end, because of course I hadn't read them, and I was going to read them on the train and give them back to Johnny when I saw him. Then I thought if they had all these things in them that were so rude about Algy and General Sangore and the rest of them, perhaps I'd better not take them down with me, because Algy mightn't like it. So I just popped them in the cloakroom meaning to collect them on my way back. But then the fire happened, and — and everything, and I came back in Mr Luker's car, and what with one thing and another I forgot all about them until you started talking about them at the Berkeley. So after last night I thought I'd better see what they were all about."

"And what are they all about?"

"I don't know yet, but they look rather dull. You see, I'd only just started to look at them when you came in. I didn't like to open them on the train, because there were always other people in the carriage, and I didn't know if they might not see something they shouldn't see… You can look at them with me if you like. As a matter of fact, I–I meant you to have them anyway."

Simon gazed at her with the admiration reserved for very special occasions.

"Darling," he said, "how can I ever have managed to misjudge you?"

"But I did, really. You don't think I'd have let Algy have them after what happened last night, do you?"

"Of course not — unless he paid you a much bigger price for compensation."

"Aren't you a beast!" she said.

The Saint sighed.

"Do we have to go into that again?"

She considered him, pouting.

"But you do really like me quite a lot, don't you?"

"Darling, I adore you."

"Well, I hope you do, because if you don't I'm going to scream for help and bring the whole town in. On the other hand, provided you're reasonable…"

The Saint put his hands in his pockets. He was patient to the point of languor, completely sure of the eventual outcome. He could afford to bide his time. These preliminaries were incidental illuminations rather than delays.

"Yes, if I'm reasonable," he said. "Go on. I'm interested."

"What I mean," she said, "is this. You can't get away from the fact that I'm just as much entitled to these papers as you are. If it comes to that, I'm probably more entitled to them, because after all Johnny gave them to me. So if I let you see them, I don't see why we shouldn't work together. You suggested it first, anyway, and after all you do make lots of money, don't you?"

He smiled.

"I keep body and soul together. But do you really think I you'd like being shot at, and having people putting arsenic in your soup and blowing up bombs under your chair and all that sort of thing?"

"I might get used to it."

"Even to finding snakes in your bed?"

"Oh, but I'd expect you to look after me," she said solemnly. "You seem to survive all right, and I expect if I was with you most of the time I'd survive, too. You've got to look after me now, anyhow. It stands to reason that if you got the papers they'll be bound to know you got them from me, and you can't just laugh lightly and walk away and leave me to be slaughtered."

"Suppose we decide about that after we've seen what these papers are," he suggested gently.

She seemed to sit more tightly in her chair, and her smile was very bright.

"You mean we are working together now?" The Saint left the door. He was moving over towards her, still with his hands in his pockets, threading his way with easy nonchalance through the narrow footpaths between the furniture. The glimmer of lazy humour on his lips and eyes was cool and good natured, but under it was a quiet ruthlessness that cannons could not have turned aside.

"Don't let's misunderstand each other again," he said pleasantly. "I came here just to see those papers. Now I'm going to look at them. There aren't any conditions attached to it. If you want a wrestling match you can have one, but you ought to know that you'll only be wasting your strength. And if you want to scream you can scream, but I don't think you'll get out more than half a beep before I knock you out. And then when you wake up you'll have a headache and a pain in your jaw, and I shall be very sorry for you, but by that time I shall have finished my reading. Does that make everything quite clear?"

Her eyes blazed at him. All her limbs were tense. She looked as if she were going to scream and risk the consequences.

The Saint didn't move. He had arrived in front of her, and there he waited. In his immobility there was a kind of cynical curiosity. It was plain that she could do what she liked: he was only interested to see what she would choose to do.

And he wasn't bluffing. His cynicism was not really unkind. He would hate hurting her, but he meant every word he had said. Circumstance had put him on to a plane where the niceties of conventional chivalry could have no weight. And she knew that it was not worth taking up the challenge.

Her lower lip thrust out petulantly.

"Damn you," she whimpered. "Oh, damn you!"

"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it.

He bent over her and took the sheaf of papers out of her hand, from behind her, and touched her mouth lightly with his own as he did so.

She got up and flung herself away from him as far as the topography of the room would let her. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, balanced for any action that might be forced upon him; but the moment of danger was past. She stood by the dressing table glowering at him and biting her lips in a way that he remembered. Her ill temper had something very childish and almost charming about it: she was like a little girl in a pet.

He sat down on the bed with the sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Are you going to Scotland for the grouse?" he inquired amiably.

She took her bag off the dressing table, jerked out a packet of cigarettes, lighted one and moved further away. She stood with her back to him, smoking furiously, tapping one foot on the threadbare carpet, the whole dorsal view of her expressive of raging contempt; but he observed that she was covertly watching him in the long mirror on the wardrobe.

The Saint lighted a cigarette himself and turned the pages of the dossier that had disordered so many lives and ended at least two of them.

At once he seemed to have forgotten her existence. He read more and more intently, with a frown of concentration deepening on his face. His intentness shut out everything beyond the information he was assimilating. For a long time there was no sound in the room except the irritating tattoo of Lady Valerie's toe beating on the floor, the rustle of paper and the creaking of rusty bedsprings as he stirred to turn a page.

And as he read on, a curious empty chill crept over him.

Lady Valerie fidgeted with the catch on the wardrobe door. She breathed on the mirror and drew silly faces with her forefinger in the cloud deposited by her breath, and went on stealing furtive glances at him. At last she turned round in a final fling of exasperation and stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer on the dressing table.

"Well," she said peevishly, "at least you might tell me what it's all about. Is it very interesting?"

"Wait a minute," he said, without looking up.

She pushed the saucer off the dressing table with an exasperated sweep of her hand. Instead of providing a satisfactory smash, it landed on the carpet with a thick plunk and rolled hollowly away over the linoleum under the washstand.

The Saint went on reading.

And as he came towards the end of the manuscript that dry deflated chill seemed to freeze the fire out of him and leave him numb with helpless bafflement.

For there was nothing in that bulky collection of documents that seemed to be worth much more than the paper it was written on in the way of powder and shot. There were the usual notes on the organization of the arms ring, principally taken from the British end, but none of it was very new. Much of it could have been found in such detailed surveys as Merchants of Death. There were notes on Luker's background, the puppet directors of his various companies, the ramifications of their many subsidiaries, their international affiliations, their political connections, their methods of business, together with well-authenticated samples of certain notable iniquities. It was all very interesting and highly scandalous, but it would cause no revolutions. Such exposes had been made before, but they had never done more than superficially ruffle the apathy of the great dumb populace which might have risen up in its wrath and destroyed them. And under the laws made by governments themselves financially interested and practically concerned in the success of the racket, if not actually subsidized by it, there were not even grounds for a criminal prosecution. It was only the kind of oft-repeated indictment that caused a temporary furore, during which the racketeers simply laid low and waited for nature to take its course and the birth of sextuplets in Kalamazoo to repossess the front pages of an indifferent press.

The latter part of the dossier was devoted to the Sons of France considered as part of a sales-promotion campaign backed by Luther and his associates. There was an educative outline of the machinery of the organization, some eye-opening copies of secret orders issued to members, specimens of its propaganda and declared objectives, in the usual Fascist jargon—"to eradicate Communism, Pacifism, and all such Jewish-inspired undermining of the heroic spirit of France… To institute state control, for the benefit of the people, over literature, art, motion pictures, radio and all other means of disseminating culture… To build up the military, naval and air strength of France so that French honour may be prepared to answer the insolence of the Hun." There was good evidence of financial support given to the organization by Luker and certain directors of the Fabrique Siebel des Armes de Guerre — but that, as Simon had pointed out to Teal, was probably not an offence under the law. There were a number of detailed records mostly made up from newspaper cuttings of certain rather revolting acts of violence and terrorism committed by alleged members of the Sons of France, but there was no evidence by which Luker and his associates could have been brought to book as their direct instigators. Certainly there was enough material to have brought down on Luker's head the moral indignation of the whole world, if the world had had any moral sense; but in the way of legal evidence of recognized crimes there wasn't enough to get him as much punishment as he would have earned by driving his car down Piccadilly at thirty-five miles an hour.

The last page of all was a sheet torn from a cheap memorandum block, on which someone seemed to have made a note of three functions or events, with their dates. The first and last were so heavily scored out as to be practically undecipherable, but the middle one was left plain and untouched in the centre of a frame of doodling arabesques such as a man draws on a pad during a conference. It read:

Fastened to it with a detachable clip was a photograph of three men, one of whom was Luker, apparently talking in an office. And in the bottom corner of the memorandum sheet was pencilled in a different hand, so quick and careless as to require a clairvoyant to read it:

The last word eluded even the Saint's powers of divination. And that was all there was.

3

Simon Templar lighted another cigarette with the dispassionate detachment of a machine. He was more cold and grim than the girl had ever seen him, or had ever realized that he could be. He looked up at her with blue eyes that bit with the intolerable glittering cold of interstellar space.

"Come here," he said.

No power of mind that she could conceive could have disobeyed him.

She came over, in spite of herself, like a mindless robot. He took her hand and drew her down on to the bed beside him.

"Is this all there ever was in this package?"

"I–I think so."

"Have you taken anything out?"

"No."

He knew she was telling the truth. As he was then, she could never have made him believe a lie.

"Was the envelope sealed when you put it in the checkroom?"

"Yes."

"It didn't look as if it had been tampered with when you got it out?"

"No."

But there he knew he was on the wrong tack. If Luker and Company had been able to get at the packet, they wouldn't have left any of it. And if they had known where it was, in order to tamper with it, they wouldn't have been going to such lengths to locate it.

This was all that there had ever been. And this was what Kennet and Windlay had died for.

He had expected that that dossier would give him a light that would make clear all mysteries, and instead it had only given him a darker riddle. He stared at that enigmatic last sheet with a glacial and immobile fury. Whatever Kennet and Windlay had been murdered for must be hidden there — he was as sure of that as he could be sure of anything, but that was no help to him… In a sudden uncontrollable defining of his belief he ripped off the rest of the heavy batch of papers and tossed them into her lap.

"There you are," he said. "You can have 'em. If there's anything there that's worth a penny more than the News of the World would pay you for it it'll take somebody a lot cleverer than me to dig it out."

"That's very nice of you," she said. "Anything that's no use, and you don't want, I can have. What's that page you're keeping?"

"I wish I knew."

"May I see it?"

She was sitting straight up, with a curious distant dignity.

He looked at her. In his mind was a nebulous puzzlement that he could not bring into sharp focus. She had not asked for terms then, nor did she go on to ask for them, but he didn't seem to have enough attention to spare for that.

He moved the paper a little, and she read it over his arm.

" 'The twenty-fifth of August — Opening of the Hospital of Memory—' "

" 'The Hostel of Memory, at Neuilly,' " he said. "I've heard something about it. It's an old chateau converted into a sort of Old Soldiers' Home, endowed by the French government for disabled veterans of the Great War to end their days in in reasonably pleasant surroundings."

" 'By Monsieur Chaulage,' " she read. "Isn't he the president, or the premier, or something?"

He nodded, and a recollection struck him like a deadened blow.

"And tomorrow is the twenty-fifth of August," he said.

She stared at him with wide expressionless eyes. There was nothing definable that her eyes could have expressed. She was as nonplussed as himself. They gazed at one another in the barren communion of hopeless bewilderment, knowing that here was something that might make their blood run cold if they could understand it, and yet not knowing what to fear.

Presently she looked at the sheet again.

"What's the rest of it?" She leaned over further to peer at the spidery scrawl across the corner. " 'Remember the—' What is it, Simon? It looks like 'Rinksty.' "

"You're as good a thought reader as I am. Does it mean anything to you?"

"Nothing."

An idea crossed his mind.

"Do you know the handwriting?"

"Of course. It's Johnny's writing."

"Johnny's! Then you must know what it means — you must be able to read it—"

She shook her head.

"But I can't! Nobody ever could, when he wrote like that. Usually he wrote quite neatly, but when he was in a hurry he just scrawled things down like that and if you were lucky and you knew what he was likely to be writing about you could sometimes guess what the words were from the first letters and how long they looked."

"But he meant this for you. He scribbled it on the page to make you think of the point. 'Remember the Rinksty?' — or whatever it is. He thought it would mean something to you. Is it something that he'd told you about before when he was talking? Is it a ship? Is it a hotel? Is it a pet name of your own that you had for some place where you used to meet — some place where he might have told you about this? For God's sake, think!"

The Saint's voice hammered at her with passionate intensity; the grip of his fingers must have been bruising her arm. Somehow he was neither pleading nor commanding, but his fire would have melted stone. She was not stone. She twisted her fingers together and looked here and there, and her face was crumpled with the frantic effort of memory; but her eyes were big and tragic when they came to his face again.

"It's no good," she said. "It doesn't ring a bell anywhere. It isn't any place we went to, I'm sure of that."

"Or anything he talked about?"

"He used to talk about so many things, but as I told you I never paid any more attention than I could help, because it all seemed so frightfully earnest and important and I'm much too young to start bothering about important things."

She couldn't' have been lying, or trying to keep anything from him. If she had been he must have known.

He stared at the paper as if by sheer physical and mental force he could drag out the secret that was wrapped up in that wandering trail of graphite particles. To have got so far and then to be stopped there was maddening; his brain couldn't accept it. He had never in his life been stopped by a puzzle that filled him with such a sickening feeling of impotence. This was no code or cipher or riddle that wit and patience might eventually solve. There were no invisible inks to develop or clues to put together. The answer was already there in black and white, exactly as Kennet had jotted it down without any intention to conceal it, wrapped up in the skeletal hieroglyphics which to him had been only ordinary hurried writing. Every kink and twist in that long squiggle that might have been "Rinksty" or "Ruckstig" or a dozen other things had stood for a definite letter when Kennet had traced his pencil over them; but he had finished writing and he would not come back to read out what he had written, and all the thought in the world wouldn't make one single kink one atom more distinct.

The Saint glared at it until it blurred under his eyes. "Something happens at Neuilly tomorrow," he said savagely, "and this ought to tell us what it is. This is what Luker and the Sons of France are murdering scared of anybody getting hold of. Johnny must have thought you'd understand. If only you'd listened to him—"

"I know," she gulped. "I know I'm a silly little fool, b-but I'll go on trying to think of it. Is-isn't the photograph any help?"

"You see if it is."

He detached the print from the clip, and as he did so a scrap of celluloid perforated along the edges fluttered away. He picked it up and held it to the light. It was a Leica negative, obviously the original of the print he had been looking at.

He looked at the photograph again, over her shoulder. It was badly underexposed but now he could identify two of the faces. On the left, seated at a desk, with his right profile to the camera, was a man with white hair and a thin underslung jaw; and Simon knew that it was Colonel Marteau, commandant of the Sons of France. In an armchair, further back, almost facing the camera, was Luker's square granitic visage. The man on the right, who faced the desk as though being interviewed, was tall and gangling and shabbily dressed: his face looked coarse and half witted, but that might have been due to the lighting or a slight movement when the picture was taken.

Simon touched him with one finger.

"Do you know him?" he asked.

"No. I'm sure I don't. I've never seen him before."

"You told me that Kennet was excited about a photograph. This must be it. What did he say about it?"

Her forehead was desperately wrinkled.

"I don't know… I told you I never listened. I've got a sort — sort of idea he said it would prove something about how Mr Luker was a murderer, but — Oh, I don't know!"

"Is that all you can remember?"

"Yes. Everything," she said despairingly. "But doesn't it help you? I mean, it's quite a lot for me to remember, really, and you're so clever, you ought to be able to think of something—"

The Saint might have hit her on the nose. He might have taken her neck in his two hands and wrung it out like a sponge. It stands to the credit of his self-control that he did neither of those things.

Instead he did something so free from deliberate thought that it might have been almost instinctive, and yet which afterwards he was tempted to think must have been inspired. He couldn't conscientiously pride himself on thinking so accurately and so far ahead. But he knew that that photograph must be a vital part of the secret, if not the most vital part; and he knew that the negative mattered far more than the print. Of all things, that was what he must retain until he knew its secret. And retaining it might not be so easy. Even then, as he knew, all the police departments of England were hunting him, as well as the anonymous legions of the ungodly. Accidents could always happen, and at any moment one or the other might catch up with him; and then, whichever it was, the first thing that would follow would be that he would be searched. Luckily a Leica negative was not so hard to hide…

That was how he might have worked it out if he had thought so long. But he didn't. He simply got up and strolled over to the dressing table with the negative held between his fingers. There, standing with his back to the girl, he took out his fountain pen, removed the cap, unscrewed the nib end and carefully drew it out with the rubber ink sac attached. Then he rolled the negative gently with his finger and thumb, slid it down into the barrel of the pen and replaced everything. It was not so good as the strong room of a safe deposit, where he would have liked to put it, but it was the best thing he could improvise at the moment; and the restrained mechanical occupation of his hands helped to liberate his struggling thoughts…

"What are you doing?" the girl asked fretfully.

"Thinking." He turned round empty handed, the pen back in his pocket. She had seen nothing. "This seems like a good time and place for it." Again his eyes were narrowed on her like keen blades of sapphire probing for the first hint of deception. "And talking of places — what made you pick on this one to come to?"

"Oh, that was something else that I thought was pretty clever of me. I mean, if you hadn't been following me, which was sort of cheating, you'd never have thought of looking for me here, would you? And it all came to me in a flash, just like that, when I was at the cloakroom in Paddington. You see, I had to go somewhere, and I couldn't go to my flat because everybody knows where that is, and I knew you and Algy and the Sons of France and everybody else would be looking for me, so I had to find somewhere to hide, and then I suddenly remembered reading in a detective story once that the best place to hide was the most obvious place, because nobody ever thought of looking in it. So then I thought, well, I was only down here a few days ago, and lots of awkward things were happening down here then, and so nobody would expect me to come back here. So I just got on the first train and came back; and I got hold of a porter just before the train went out and gave him a telegram to send to Algy and told him if he wanted to talk to me any more about these papers he could put an advertisement in the Morning Post… What's the matter?"

The Saint was standing and gooping at her as if he had been hit on the back of the head. It was a few moments before he recovered his voice.

"You sent Fairweather a telegram before the train left?"

"Yes."

"From Paddington?"

"Yes. You see—"

"Never mind what I see. You poor little blithering featherhead, can't you see what you did?"

"Did I do anything wrong?"

The Saint swallowed.

"No, nothing," he said. "You only told him where to look for you. Haven't you realized that your telegram would be marked as handed in at Paddington? And do you think he's had a house here for all these years without knowing that Paddington is the station where you take off for Anford? And don't you think your telegram is going to remind him about it? And don't you think he's ever read any detective stories? And don't you think that that's just the half-witted break he'd credit you with at once from what he knows of you? He can afford the risk of being wrong; but where do you think is the first place he's going to look for you, just for luck? You — you female Uniatz, you've left him a trail a mile wide that leads straight to where you're sitting!"

At any other time her dismay might have been comical. She looked as if she were going to cry.

"D-do you really think he'll think of all that?"

"I know damn well he'll think of it. Has thought of it. There may be plenty of things about him I don't like, but he couldn't be where he is and be that dumb. And besides, he has Luker to help him think." Simon glanced at his watch. "By this time—"

He had no need to go into any further explanations of what might have happened by that time. A heavy knock on the door provided them for him.

The sound went down into the Saint's stomach as if he had swallowed a lump of lead. For an instant he felt as if all the blood stopped circulating in his veins, and his ears roared with the thunder of his own stillness. The knocking was so apt, so uncannily instantaneous on its cue, that for a fraction of a second he seemed to be jarred out of all power of movement.

And then he was very quiet and very cool. His glance whirled over the room: its masses of furniture provided half-a-dozen hiding places but none of them was any good. He took one step aside and looked out of the window. It opened on to the High Street, and the sidewalks were busy with people.

The Saint's eyes went back to Lady Valerie, and they were oddly, incredibly gay. But besides that reckless humour they carried something else that could only be described here in page after page of inadequate words. She stared at him in the frightened continuation of a stupor that had lasted longer than his own, while his eyes spoke to her with that queer vague message that awoke no less formless questions and answers in her brain, and the two of them seemed to be infinitely alone in a strange universe of their own where thoughts passed without words; all of that in an eternity that could only have lasted for a moment before his lips were shaping inaudible syllables:

"Let them in."

She got up, and he moved behind her and stood behind the door as she opened it, with his right hand resting lightly on the butt of his gun inside the breast of his coat.

A voice said: "Lady Valerie? May we come in?"

She stammered something and stepped back. The Saint felt the edge of the bed against his knees and sat down quickly on it. The door, closing again, disclosed him to the arrivals at the same time as it revealed them to him. They were the police sergeant whom he had met before, in plain clothes, and the constable whose name was Reginald.

4

Whereupon quite a number of interesting jobs of looking proceeded to take place in various directions.

The Saint looked at the two arms of the law, and his face broke into an affable and untroubled smile of welcome. He took his right hand out of the breast of his coat with his cigarette case in it.

The constable looked at the Saint, and his mouth sagged open. He said in a dazed and dumbfounded sort of voice: "Gorblimey, it's 'im." Then he went on staring, while his honest red face expressed an inward struggle between admiration and duty.

The sergeant looked at the Saint and stiffened. He looked slightly frightened, but his uneasiness was clearly subservient to his sense of responsibility. He planted himself more firmly on his by-no-means-ethereal feet, as if bracing himself to deal with trouble.

Then another thought seemed to cross his mind, distracting him. He tried to resist it, but it grew stronger. He frowned. He looked at Lady Valerie again, rather perplexedly.

Lady Valerie looked at him and twitched a rather weak and uncertain little smile. Then she looked at the Saint.

The Saint looked at her. His face was cheerfully composed, but his eyes said again, for her alone, the same things that they had said when the two of them had looked at one another before he told her to open the door. It was as if they met her with a challenge, a suggestion, a request, a mocking invitation, a sardonic query, anything but a plea; and yet no other eyes on earth could have pleaded more compellingly. And now she understood some things that she had not understood before.

She looked at the sergeant again.

The sergeant looked at the constable.

The constable looked at the sergeant, not very intelligently, perhaps, but with a dawning grasp of what was troubling his superior's mind.

Both of them looked at the Saint.

Both of them looked at Lady Valerie.

Both of them looked at the Saint once more.

The sergeant scratched his head.

"Well, I dunno," he announced helplessly. "There must be somethink barmy about this."

Simon had his cigarette case open. He took out a cigarette.

"What's on your mind, brother?" he inquired amiably.

The sergeant took another look round, and apparently could only come to the same conclusion. As if in token of surrender, he took off his hat.

"Well sir, it's like this. Just a few minutes ago we received a message from Scotland Yard saying as you'd kidnapped Lady Valerie Woodchester, an' she'd escaped from you, an' they 'ad reason to believe she might 'ave come here to Anford, an' you might be arfter 'er to try an' kidnap 'er again, an' we was to endeavour to trace 'er an' afford her every protection, an' if we found you hanging about there was a warrant for your arrest. Well, we tried the hotels first, and as soon as we rang up 'ere they told us that Lady Valerie 'ad just come in and taken a room. So I come along to see if she'd like to make a statement an' if she wanted a man to look arfter 'er, an' now you're here with" er, and… Well," said the sergeant, plugging his initial thesis, "there must be somethink barmy about it."

"There's a warrant for my arrest?" Simon ejaculated. "What on earth is it for?"

"Kidnapping Lady Valerie. An' obstructing the police in the execution of their duty."

Simon had wondered how Mr Teal would officially describe being locked up in a wardrobe with an ex-cabinet minister.

"Good Lord," he said, "does it look as if Lady Valerie was excited about being rescued?"

"That," said the sergeant, with lugubrious finality, "is wot looks so barmy."

The Saint grinned and leaned back.

"Are you sure somebody hasn't been pulling your leg?" he suggested.

"I dunno. If anybody has, 'e'll be sorry he ever tried it before I've finished with 'im. But it sounded all right, just like the regular communications we 'ave from the Yard when there's anythink doing." The sergeant turned his disappointedly bewildered eyes back to the girl. "Did Mr Templar kidnap you, miss?" he asked, like a drowning man clutching at the last straw.

Lady Valerie looked at the Saint again and back to the two policemen.

Simon put his cigarette between his lips and drew at it very slowly.

"Why," she said, "that's the funniest thing I ever heard!"

There was a silence in which no pins could have been heard dropping because nobody was dropping pins. The sergeant scratched another part of his head and squeezed little wedges of coagulated dandruff from under his fingernails. He looked as unhappy as any public servant must look when confronted by a situation that fails to follow the dotted line. Simon took his cigarette out of his mouth and trickled the smoke out in a long leisured streamer through the unaltered quizzical curve of his lips. His gaze rested contemplatively on Lady Valerie as her glance returned to him. She looked coy and complacent, like a puppy that has got away with an unguarded plate of foie gras canapés. It was left to the constable to make the first constructive contribution. An expression of mingled relief and pride had ironed the wrinkles out of his countenance when he heard Lady Valerie's confirmatory denial: quite plainly he had been making a dutiful effort to convince himself that the Saint had actually been caught more or less red handed, but he had never really made it stick hard enough to be able to let go of it, and it was distinctly cheering to him to be absolved from the strain of continuing to hold it down. Now he was free to indulge in his own theories, and the solution came to him with dazzling simplicity.

"I can see wot's 'appened," he proclaimed. "It's as clear as daylight. It's a gang. That's wot it is. One of these gangs which Mr Templar is always breakin' up 'as got it in for 'im, and they're tryin' to frame him for this kidnapping which he knows nothing about so as to get 'im out o' the way and leave 'emselves free to get on with their dirty work. That's wot it is."

The sergeant did not seem impressed.

"It isn't because any threats 'ave bin made to you in case you tell the truth, is it, Lady Valerie?" he persisted, as if hoping against hope. "Because if they 'ave, I can tell you that while we're here you need 'ave no fear of any menaces, no matter ooze—"

"Of course not," said the girl. "Really, Sergeant, you're very kind, and I'm sure you mean well and all that sort of thing, but this is getting too ridiculous for words."

"It's a gang," repeated the constable confidently. "That's wot—"

"Will you shut your mouth?" said the sergeant crushingly; and when his subordinate had obeyed he looked rather miserable and lonely. "Wot the 'ell," he said, giving way to forces stronger than official rank, "are we goin' to do about this?"

There was a pause of intense cogitation.

"Get 'old of Scotland Yard," said the constable, "and tell 'em wot Lady Valerie says."

"While we keep Mr Templar in custody," said the sergeant, seeing light.

"But you can't!" the girl said indignantly. "How can you lock Mr Templar up in your beastly prison for kidnapping me when I'm here to prove that he hasn't done anything of the sort? I mean, I'm the one who's supposed to have been kidnapped, so I ought to have some say about it. Who's got any right to say I've been kidnapped if I say I haven't?"

The sergeant wriggled wretchedly inside his coat.

"I dunno, miss," he said. "But those are the instructions we 'ad from London."

"I won't hear of it!" she said tearfully.

She sat down on the bed beside the Saint and took hold of his arm. Her lovely brown eyes gazed at him with something like worship.

"Do you think we ought to tell them, Simon?" she said.

"Do you?" he replied, not knowing what she was talking about, but with an awful premonition.

"Yes." She flounced up and took hold of the sergeant's arm. "You see," she said, "Mr Templar and I are going to be married."

Simon Templar leaned back on his elbows just a split second before he would have fallen back on them. His brain whirred like a clock preparing to strike.

The sergeant blinked.

The constable gulped, and then his face opened in a great joyful romantic beam.

He said: "Wot?"

She said: "Yes. You see, we only just fixed it up last night, when we found out we were in love. And — and we didn't want any publicity. I mean, you know what the newspapers would do with anything like that. So we thought we'd just run away. I suppose some of my friends have been trying to get hold of me, or something, and when they found I'd disappeared they thought something frightful had happened to me, and so they told Scotland Yard and started all this silly scare; but there's nothing in it really, and we've just eloped, and we're going to get married as soon as we can fix it up, and you can't arrest Mr Templar because that would spoil everything and it 'd be in all the papers and we'd get all the limelight that we're trying to get away from. You do understand, don't you?"

The Saint lay completely back and closed his eyes, because he could think of nothing else to do.

And she had the nerve to sit down beside him and kiss him.

And then the constable was pumping his limp hand and saying: "Well sir, may I 'ave the honour of being the first to congratulate you."

"You may, Reginald," said the Saint feebly. "Indeed you may. And for all I know, you may be the last."

"Well, I dunno," said the sergeant, harping on his theme."I suppose in that case all we can do is take a statement an' let both of you go."

"I'll take it down," said the constable.

He rummaged eagerly in his pocket and pulled out sheets of official foolscap. With his tongue protruding, he wrote laboriously at dictation.

" 'My name is Lady Valerie Woodchester… I was not kidnapped by Mr Simon Templar. I am in love with him. We have eloped together… I eloped in secret because we did not wish any fuss…' Will you sign your name 'ere, miss?"

Lady Valerie signed.

"Mr Templar 'd better sign it, too," said the sergeant gloomily.

The Saint drew a deep breath, but he could say nothing. He took the pen and wrote his name with a steady hand.

The sergeant read over the sheet, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

"Well," he said despondently, "that's all we can do. Will you be stayin' 'ere for some time, sir?"

"No," said the Saint definitely. "We were only spending a few hours before we went on to Southampton to catch a boat." He got up. "We'll go out with you."

They went out. The constable carried Lady Valerie's tiny valise. Simon paid the bill for her room at the desk. They left the hotel.

Simon steered the cortege along the street to the side turning where he had parked the Daimler. If Lady Valerie was surprised to see it she gave no sign. He opened the near-side door and ushered her in with ceremonial courtesy. Just then he was too full of thoughts for words. He went round the car and got into the driving seat.

The constable leaned in at the window.

"Good-bye, sir," he said jovially. "And I 'opes all your troubles are little ones."

"So do I," said the Saint, from the bottom of his heart, and let in the clutch.

The sergeant and the constable stood and watched him go. Simon saw them receding in the driving mirror. The sergeant looked vaguely frustrated, as if he still thought he ought to have done something else even though he couldn't think of anything else he could have done. The constable looked as if he wished he had had a handful of confetti in his pocket.

Simon drove out of town and took the cross-country road that led towards Amesbury. His emotions were approximately those of a shell that has just been fired out of a gun. He had been shot into space with one terrific explosion, and now he was sailing along with the fateful knowledge that there was another almighty bang waiting at the other end of the journey. The old proverbial voyagings between frying pans and fires seemed like comparatively pale and peaceful transitions to him. He drove very carefully, as if the car had been made out of glass.

Lady Valerie snuggled up against him.

"Are you happy, darling?" she said.

"Beloved," said the Saint chokily, "I'm so happy that I could wring your neck."

"Don't you appreciate what I've done for you?"

"Every bit of it," he said, with superhuman moderation. "So much so that if I'd had the least idea what was in your mind—"

"Where shall we go for our honeymoon?"

Simon nursed the car round a corner like an old lady wheeling her granddaughter's pram.

"Listen," he said, "I don't particularly care where you go for our honeymoon so long as it's no place where I'm going. If you have any sense, which is getting more-doubtful every minute, you'll travel like smoke for the next few days and put the biggest distance you can between yourself and London; and you won't send your friends any picture post-cards on the way to let them know where you are."

Her lips trembled slightly.

"I see," she said. "You… you've had all you want from me, and now you just want to get rid of me. Well, I've been too clever for you this time. I'm not going to be got rid of."

"Do you want to die young?" demanded the Saint exasperatedly. "Don't you see that I'm going to be much too busy to look after you? For Pete's sake, have a little sense. I'll let you off at Southampton, where there are lots of boats going to nice places like New Zealand and so forth."

"And what are you going to do after you've ditched me?" she asked sulkily. "I suppose you'll go dashing back to your blonde girl friend and tell her how clever you are."

"I don't have to tell her," said the Saint. "She knows."

"Well, you're not as clever as all that," flared the girl in open mutiny. "You heard what I told those two policemen. You didn't deny it then — anything was all right with you so long as it helped you to get away. You — you signed your name to it. And I won't be ditched. If you try to get rid of me now I–I'll sue you for breach of promise!"

Simon steadied himself. Now that the impending thunderstorm had broken, exactly as he had been nerving himself for it, he almost felt better.

"No jury would give you a farthing damages, sweetheart," he said. "As a matter of fact, they'd probably give me a reward for letting you out of an agreement to marry me."

"Oh, would they? Well, we'll see. It's all very well for you to go around breaking thousands of hearts and pushing around all the women you meet like a little Hitler bossing his tame dummies in the Reichstag—"

The car rocked with a force that flung her away from him.

The Saint straightened it up again anyhow. He let go the wheel and thumped his fists on it like a lunatic.

He yodelled. His face was transfigured.

"My God," he yelled, "how did you think of it? Of course that's what it was. That's the answer. The Reichstag!"

She gaped at him, rubbing a bruised elbow where it had hit the door in that wild swerve.

"What's the matter?" she asked blankly. "Have you gone pots or something?"

"The Reichstag!" he whooped deliriously. "Don't you see? That's what Kennet wrote on that bit of paper. REMEMBER THE REICHSTAG!"

He was so dazed with understanding that he had not noticed a big black Packard which had crept up behind them, was hardly aware when it pulled out in the narrow road and raced level with the crawling Daimler. Almost unconsciously he swung in to let it pass.

Lady Valerie looked back over her shoulder and suddenly screamed. With a quick panicky movement she turned and grabbed at the steering wheel and twisted it sharply. From the overtaking car came the crisp high-pitched crack of a gun, and the windscreen splintered in front of Simon's eyes. Then the Daimler lurched madly as its near-side wheels slithered and plunged into a gully at the side of the road. The bank that rose up from there to the bordering hedge seemed to loom directly ahead. Simon felt himself hurled forward helplessly in his seat; the steering wheel struck him a violent blow in the chest and knocked the wind out of him; then he rose into the air as if deprived of weight. Something struck him a fearful blow on the top of the head. Bright lights whirled dizzily before his eyes and faded into a blackening mist of unconsciousness.